


High School AU

by WhumpTown



Category: Criminal Minds (US TV)
Genre: F/M, Gen, Hurt Aaron Hotchner, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Protective Emily Prentiss, Whump
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-03
Updated: 2021-02-03
Packaged: 2021-03-14 11:40:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,037
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29170494
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WhumpTown/pseuds/WhumpTown
Summary: High School AU: Emily tossing a rope out her window for Hotch to climb up so she can clean him up after his father’s been drinking
Relationships: Aaron Hotchner & Emily Prentiss, Aaron Hotchner/Emily Prentiss
Comments: 3
Kudos: 41





	High School AU

The first time Emily Prentiss met the Hotchners she was struck by the dark features of the eldest boy. A sharp jawline accented by the purpling bruise on his cheek. Her eyes never leave him as his mother makes a sheepish but ultimately flat lie on his behalf– or rather, his father’s  
.   
The youngest shows none of the same hawk-like features as his elder brother. Aaron and Sean, she learns their names to be, doesn’t seem to have a lot in common at all. On the surface, that is. Her mother wraps an arm around her shoulder as she introduces them both, smiling as she places that Aaron is only a year ahead of Emily in school. They might make good friends. 

Emily sincerely doubts this. 

It turns out she’s cruelly mistaken.

“Would you get your big ass–” she’s found herself in an odd tangle of arms and torso. The two of them gripping one another tightly as he teeters on the edge of her window seal. “Why are you so long?!” He falls through the clearing with a huff, Emily landing on the bottom of their dogpile.

He rolls off of her a second later– smelling of the woods and damp clothing. His breathing is disrupted by pants. Whether it be from the pain of injuries she’s yet to take stock of or from running through the dense woods this late at night. True to his nature, always the perfect gentleman, he’s the first to sit up offering her not only his hand in aid but an apology.

She takes his hand and rises to her own feet. Over the course of the last few months, she’s learned her fair share about this small town in Virginia. The humidity, on the right day, is a punch to the face. The rain, which should cool things off, makes this worse. Unless, of course, the rain brings showers. The kind that do not relent for the upwards of a week, perhaps more. 

They are currently in the midst of a never-ending shower. Thunder shakes the earth and strikes fear in her heart as it cracks across the sky. Aaron never seems to be bothered by these noises. If anything, he loves the rain and yearns for it when it’s gone. Which explains why his already ill-fitting clothes are twisted on his long body, dripping water on her floor.

They do this enough that all she needs to do is step to her dresser.

“Are you staying the night,” she asks, pulling open her sock drawer and retrieving the men’s pajama bottoms out from under a layer of bras. The only place she’s can be certain her mother won’t go snooping. She tosses them on her bed and waits for his reply.

He’s too busy fumbling to get himself out his wet jeans. 

That’s the difference in their families and even just the two of them. 

Where Aaron is a soft-spoken, easily flustered straight A student, Emily is a rebel on the mend. She wears fishnets and skirts that push the dress code. A parallel to Aaron’s old army green jacket with the large breast pocket where he keeps the cigarettes they smoke on her roof. He pushes her to be a better person and a better student and she helps him hide the bruises. 

Speaking of, she stands as she sees a nasty abrasion on his back. He’s turned away from her, struggling to get his wet shoelaces untied. When her hands meet his cold flesh they both shiver. She flinches when he jerks, catching her wrist in his much larger hand. 

There’s a flash of something in his eyes, something she doesn’t recognize before he releases her hand just as quickly as he’d caught it. She watches as he clenches his fist, forcing the knuckles white with the force.

“Sorry,” he rasps.

She pulls her wrist to her chest. “I shouldn’t have snuck up on you,” she excuses. “It was my fault.” She knows better than to do something like that. He has a very short list of unspoken rules: no sneaking up, no announced touches, don’t talk about the nightmares, and never mention the bruises. 

He rises to his feet, cheeks burning as he finally steps out of his jeans and stands in nothing but an old pair of blue boxers. Emily knows better than to look for too long. She’s not certain if it’s the scars that mark most of his body or just the self-imagery problems that all teens have but he doesn’t like to be looked at. 

No matter how many times she reassures him that he’s a very attractive man.

“He’s dying,” Aaron finally announces after a baited moment.

Emily looks up from her lap and finds him sitting on the edge of her bed, the pajama pants on. His chest is bare, allowing her the chance to clean him up some. But his comment has distracted her. Her mind takes a moment to process exactly what he means. 

When Emily settles on the bed beside him, her first-aid kit in hand, he’s crying. She’d given up a long time ago trying to understand what emotions she should feel towards his father– the man accused of hurting her best friend. She also understands that she’ll never know how to feel about him because Aaron doesn’t know how he feels. 

She reaches up and cups the back of his head, scooting closer so she can pull his bigger frame to hers. “I’m so sorry, Aaron.”

He sobs into her shoulder, his arms wrapping around her. 

She’d like to pretend this the first time she’s held him together after his father’s gotten a hold of him but that’s simply not true. Tonight, the bruises on his body can’t be fixed chain-smoking on the roof. How can it? His father is dying. Where does that leave Aaron? A senior in high school meant to leave in three months for college, and leave behind a dying father, a helpless mother, and a nine-year-old Sean. 

“I hate him,” Aaron gasps but she knows him too well. He’s never hated his father, not even at his lowest. “I’ll be glad when he dies,” but there is no conviction in his words. There can’t be, not at the rate tears pour down his eyes. “He’s a bastard. I hate him.”

She rubs his back, nodding her understanding as he works through his grief. 

“Emily?”

She hums.

“I’m supposed to hate him, aren’t I?”

The Aaron she knows is the strongest person she’s ever met. He’s brave and smart. Calculus may not come to him easily but his emotional intelligence is scary. He can call a bluff from anyone and it makes him crazy good at poker. Mostly, Aaron is a kind-hearted softy. He showers his baby brother in gifts whenever he can afford it and remembers every little thing about her no matter how silly. 

Because he’s loving and caring and kind. He’s nothing like his father.

“Aaron,” she has no idea what he’s supposed to feel. Her own father is distant and the only person she’s known who died was her grandfather when she was ten. “No one can tell you how to feel. There is no right answer.”

This seems to sober him and he pulls himself back away from her. He curls himself forward, hunching over. 

She patches him up. 

The bruises will have to wait for tomorrow but for now, she can apply a butterfly bandage to his bleeding eyebrow. If she sneaks downstairs she can get him some ice for his lip but she redirects her energy to cleaning the cut on his side. She’s not sure what it came from. The wound is jagged and it looks like some dirt got into it, so if she had to guess he was pushed in the driveway. Rocks leaving this wound. 

She places a bandaid over it and no matter how much she has to dig into the wound he does not flinch. 

He never flinches. 

Placing the first aid kit back under her bed, she cuts the lights out. Pulling the comforter back she takes his hand and guides him under the covers. 

“He–” his voice has lowered to a whisper. His body shakes as much as his voice. “He put a knife to my throat once,” he tells her. The darkness has provided him a cover and unable to see her reactions he feels safe to tell her the truth. “Told my mother he was going to slit my throat in front of her so that she would have to watch as–” he swallows thickly. 

Emily presses her face into his side, squeezing his hand.

“She didn’t do anything,” Aaron’s hot tears slide over his face. “She never did anything.” But that’s not true. When Emily wasn’t where she used to hold him. In the long hours after the booze knocked his father out, his mother would climb the stairs to his room with whatever food his father wouldn’t notice was missing. She’d patch up the worst of the bruises and hold him into the early hours of the morning.

Emily rubs her thumb over his knuckles. “She loves you,” she reassures him. “He does too, in a sick twisted way.” The words are forced and they both know it. She can’t be bothered to lie to him right now. Not while her mind is tainted with the sight of his dead body. Her best friend… dead.

“I don’t think…” he feels a deep pang in his chest. His heart is aching. “I don’t think they ever did,” he admits. “Not really, not the right way.”

Emily sits up and presses a kiss to his cheek. She cups his cheek in her hand, squinting in the dark to see his eyes. “Sean loves you,” she tells him firmly. This they both know to be true. Sean worships the ground on which Aaron walks. After a moment she adds, “I love you.”

Neither are sure of the full depth of which she means the statement but that doesn’t matter.  
Aaron nods his understanding and she settles back down beside him. He stares at the ceiling, her head on his shoulder. 

Too long passes before he hesitantly asks, “Emily?” Her breathing has evened out, she’s asleep. He squeezes her hand, their fingers still interlocked. “I love you too.”

Contrary to what both teens thing. Elizabeth is very aware of the rope hanging out of her fifteen-year-old’s window. The horrid contraption the only way Emily could think to get that Hotchner boy from down the street up into their house. Never mind their perfectly good front door. 

In her daughter’s doorway, Elizabeth opens the door to a sight that has greeted her many times over the course of the last year. The teens are asleep, Aaron under the covers while Emily lays atop them, her head rests on his shoulder. He still has enough skin exposed for her to see the latest damage his father has done to him. 

With any luck, Emily will help him down the rope in the morning and he’ll knock on the front door. Elizabeth will demand he stay for breakfast and he’ll sheepishly comply. That’s the least she can do for him. He’ll hide here for the day and at nightfall, Elizabeth will hear Emily’s soft sobs as Aaron makes the long walk back to his own home. 

To a condemned beating. 

Maybe, he’ll be back in the morning or next week but he will be back and Emily will be waiting.   
A lifetime from now she’ll walk into his office and for a moment they’ll be these kids again. He’ll be reeling with loss, shaky but still that boy from Virginia who likes to stand in the rain. She’ll have a box of her belongings and take his deliberate incorrect recalling of her alma mater as an insult because she’s still the girl from all over the world who’s too loud for her own good.

He’ll risk his career for her and she’ll hold his hand as the world caves in around him.   
They’ll always be the kids that Elizabeth sees right now. So close, yet worlds apart. Fighters.


End file.
